Add a null to expressions

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1

In some cases, I want to allow a null value to be the result of an expression.

This is already an option for special cases as the NULLIF()funktion.

However a common case is something like this:

if(@Variable.status  = 'released', @App info.Current Date and Time , {null})

I have 10 record fields to save to and one or two of them are dependent on other values. Then I don’t want to add more and more triggers because I don’t want the redundancy, and maintenance overhead.

The only workaround I found is to use the NULLIF() function with dummy values to create a “date-type-null-value” (NULLIF(1,1) does not work for dates because 1 is not a date)…

if(@Variable.status  = 'released', @App info.Current Date and Time , nullif(@Table record.CurrentRecord.Date Created , @Table record.CurrentRecord.Date Created ))

please make null a valid null value as a possible expression result!

2

A secondary use for this would be to allow null detection i.e.
If @Variable = {null} Then Show Message “No Value Returned”

It would be useful if it were able to be located under Static Value in selections

3

Great idea, however there is already the function ISNULL()

IF( ISNULL( @variable.xyz), true, false)
4

Extra special sauce for you @thorsten.langner on the date problem. Shouldn’t be this hard but hopefully this helps others in the future!

nullif(texttodatetime(if(@Variable.Selected SAP Batch v4.Date of Manufacture  = '', '1900-01-01', @Variable.Selected SAP Batch v4.Date of Manufacture ), 'YYYY-MM-DD'), texttodatetime('1900-01-01', 'YYYY-MM-DD'))

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5

Yes thats basically what I did.

nullif(@App info.Current Date and Time , @App info.Current Date and Time )

Any date variable compared with itself will work in the NULLIF()
But this is

  • not intuitive
  • hard to read
  • an additional dependency to maintain
  • more complex, since you need to hit the correct datatype

…

Or have I misunderstood what you’re getting at?

6

You’re correct, Thorsten. This was just a unique variant where we were parsing a string to a null date and not a null string.